Labour to fast-track light rail
Labour has fired the first major salvo in the Mt Roskill by-election campaign with a promise to fasttrack a light rail system from Auckland’s Wynyard quarter through Britomart to Mt Roskill.
The 13-kilometre route is expected to cost almost $1.4 billion, and Labour leader Andrew Little said the Government and the Auckland Council would pay about $680 million each.
The line would be the basis for a more extensive light rail network.
He said the Auckland Council had included the light rail line as part of its 10-year plan from 2016 to 2026. But the Government’s Auckland Transport Alignment Plan had pushed it back to after 2028.
Labour was keen to start work on the line ‘‘as soon as possible’’ and would work with the council to make it a priority within 10 years.
The Mt Roskill by-election will be held on December 3 to find a replacement for Labour’s Phil Goff, who quit when he won the Auckland mayoralty.
Transport and housing are expected to be the major local issues in the battle for a seat, which Labour is expected to hold although National was ahead of Labour in the party vote in the 2014 election.
It is not clear how much of Goff’s personal vote will stay with its candidate Michael Woods.
National has selected list MP Parmjeet Parmar, who lost to Goff in 2014, to contest the seat.
Little denied the policy was an election bribe, saying it brought forward an existing plan.
Drivers were taking 10 minutes longer to get to work in the last three years alone, and it was getting worse.
The area around Mt Roskill is referred to as ‘‘the void’’ by Auckland Transport because it lacks access to the existing mass transit network.
‘‘Labour will prioritise delivering a light rail line from the Wynyard Quarter through to Britomart along Queen St to Dominion Rd, and ending near the Stoddard-Sandringham road intersection,’’ said Little.
He said 29,000 homes and 48,000 jobs were located within 500 metre of the planned stops, with major growth likely in the coming decade.
The project had an estimated benefit-to-cost ratio of up to 1.9 – a gain of 90 cents for each dollar invested – and would reduce congestion.
Auckland Transport had pointed out that key arterials with major bus routes were near capacity.
Labour said the route to Mt Roskill would intersect with bus and heavy-rail networks at several stops, and would open the option of a light-rail or heavy-rail connection to the airport.
A Labour-led Government’s $680m share of the cost would be met ‘‘from unallocated funds in future years of the National Land Transport Programme without the need for additional revenue’’, Labour said in background material with the announcement.
Little said the other half of the cost would be met by the Auckland Council. It had not yet agreed to a 50/50 split, which Little said was ‘‘subject to negotiation’’.
He said Labour was ‘‘agnostic’’ about different forms of financing for the council’s share.
There would not need to be any impact on existing homes or buildings. The roads were built to accommodate trams and light rail, Little said.
Parmar responded to the announcement with an attack on Wood, saying he was desperate to be a politician and was putting Labour politics ahead of Mt Roskill.
She said he had changed his stance on light rail from last year when he had said light rail was ‘‘not a fully formed proposal’’.
She said she was ‘‘hugely focused on tackling transport issues, including filling the gaps in the bus routes, getting better quality bus shelters built, changing the absurd T3 lanes, and making popular footpaths safer for pedestrians’’. - Fairfax NZ